


tell your children (not to do what i have done)

by Myzic



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Child Neglect, Gen, Not Beta Read, Suicidal Ideation, Swearing, This is a heavy one, themes of depression, toxic parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:15:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29128587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myzic/pseuds/Myzic
Summary: "You know what happens to children that grow up punching others, that grow up violent and angry?”“No,” Juno replies dutifully.“They go to jail, and if that happens I will disown you,” Ma growls and whips her head from the road to look at him with furious eyes. “Do you understand me, I will disown you and you will not be my son anymore.”The buildings blur by and the window rattles inside its frame. “Yeah,” he agrees. “I get it.”Or, Juno Steel grows up a bad kid and a worse son.
Kudos: 19





	tell your children (not to do what i have done)

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warnings for: suicidal ideation, themes of depression, toxic parenting, child neglect
> 
> hoo boy, Mind those tags, guys. Really, take care of yourselves.

“And that’s the next thing we’re going to talk about,” Ms. Sim announces, clapping her hands together cheerfully to get the class’s attention, a near-impossible task in a room of fifty. “Holding your parent’s hand when you cross the street!”

She’s fooling no one, not when half the kids in this class are going to dart across the street from Oldtown Elementary as soon as the bell rings. 

“Now, the vehicles on the street can’t see you,” She goes on, unminding of chatter filling the spaces between her words. “So, when you’re crossing the road you all hold your parent’s hand because they love you very much and want all of you to be safe, right?” They drone back affirmations and for a second as she smiles, the lines beneath her eyes look smaller.

She’s tired in the way Ma is, he thinks. Stretched thin, all knobby arms, and sharper than he thought bones could be. Their class is filled to the brim with kids, bustling without a second of quiet. The upper grades aren’t as full, Juno knows. Fewer kids to fill them up.

At lunch, he stands in the long line to the sink and Benten gives him a look. “We gotta wash our hands,” Juno defends, “it’s proper— proper hy— I don’t want to eat my food with dirty hands.”

He waits for half of their lunch break just so he can get to the front of the line. Ms. Sim doesn’t entirely look at him as he sticks his hands in and she demonstrates how to work in the suds with her own dry fingers. 

“How do you know?” he asks, and she blinks at him like she’s waking up. 

“Sorry,” begins Ms. Sim, “what was that, Benzaiten?” Juno doesn’t correct her.

“How can you tell she loves us?” Juno repeats and her gaze drops, hands faltering.

The kid behind him bumps into Juno’s shoulder but he doesn’t look back. “All parents love their kids very much, sweetie. They have to.”

“Or what?” She seems bewildered and Ms. Sim’s eyebrows furrow but he is used to adults looking at him like that. Juno turns off the tap water, pushes back the metal crank, and steps away from the sink. Funny how adults say kids act like they know everything when he usually finds it’s the opposite. “Thanks, Ms. Sim.”

They’re sat down in front of big baskets of crayons later, all of them dull, stained, and mottled in the cracked plastic bins. Juno hands Benzaiten a neon green one and loses his chance to grab the red he wanted when a girl snatches it before he can lean over. She sticks out her tongue when he eyeballs her and it’s stained purple-blue.

Juno thinks about closed office doors, and the way his and Benten’s shoelaces are tucked inside their sneakers right now because neither of them knows how to tie a bow tight enough for them to stay laced.  _ All parents love their kids very much _ . He wonders if Ma knows they love her. He thinks, maybe it should go both ways, two cars on opposite sides of the road passing the other by. Then, Juno knows what he wants to draw.

It’s messy and the hair is sort of wonky, but Juno remembers the way Ma’s hair used to fall, like sheets of black cloth over her jacket as she bent down to pick them up from daycare, arms open. He draws it the way it looked before instead of how it is now, cropped above her collarbone, jutting.

Benzaiten doesn’t pause to show Ma his when they get home, heading straight for the fridge without pause, but Juno wants Ma to see his, not just idly notice it when she goes to make breakfast. She’s in the kitchen when they get back, reaching up on a stepping stool to shove something to the back of their sparsely stocked cupboards.

Juno taps her on the back lightly, making sure his footsteps are loud so she hears him coming and doesn’t yell or fall onto the ground.

“Yes,” Ma acknowledges without turning it around. “What is it?”

Juno shuffles closer, holding up his sheet of paper. “I wanted to show you something.”

A sigh. “Alright, but not for too long. I’m just taking a break right now, and I still need to get back to work.” She takes a step down and he holds out the thinly lined sheet for it to be plucked from his fingers.

Ma stares at it for a second and her hands tighten around the corners, crumpling the page ever so slightly. Juno inhales and clenches his fingers so he doesn’t snatch the drawing back the way he desperately wants to. “It’s for you,” he mutters, and her fingers loosen on the page.

She sticks it on the counter and smoothens the edges where creased lines had begun to form in the shape of crescent fingernails. “Juno, don’t you ever want to draw anything else?” Ma leans down, crouching on the floor. “Don’t you want to spread your wings a little? I thought they encouraged creativity at that school,” she mutters and does not smile the way Ms. Sim did like it was a lifeline.

“I did draw something different,” Juno insists.

Ma grabs it from the counter and waves it in front of him. “No, see this? This is the same thing you always used to draw. I thought you were done with your whole superhero phase.” She gives a frustrated little noise, and how does he explain this isn’t just another superhero? “Why can’t you like dinosaurs or the Martians or something?”

“Can I have it back?”

She places it in his outstretched hands and he’s reminded of a game they play in class, ‘hot potato’ where they all sit in a circle and throw around a beanbag as fast as they can. Ma’s hands retract like this too is painful to touch. “How about you save this one for your room?” She suggests.

Juno holds it to his chest. “...Okay,” he agrees and marches off to his and Benzaiten’s room, blinking as he turns away.

Benten looks up from a bunch of toy soldiers he has splayed over his sheets. “Did she like it?” he asks knowingly and Juno grumbles back, climbing up the ladder to his bed on the top bunk, unminding of the drawing crumpling in his hand as he climbs. “I thought it was pretty cool, Juno,” Ben offers like consolation, but Juno wants pity even less than he does his drawing.

He swipes a hand across his eyes and drops the paper from the top of his bed, watching a squiggly figure in a red cape, yellow tights, and Ma’s hair flutter to the floor.

* * *

He’s in the principal’s office, tuning out Mr. Lowell’s angry voice. Juno picks at his knuckles, the strange shaky feeling in his bones having evaporated. Except, all it’s done is packed its bags, moved to his lungs, to his wrists that shake harder with every incensed look Ma gives him.

So, Juno tunes out, stares at the floor, his hands, anything or anyone who isn’t looking at him like he’s something the War chewed up and spat out at their feet. His options are limited. 

What do they see when they look at him? He hopes they see the blood on his knuckles first, the split skin where scabs have not yet healed over. Juno hopes he looks every bit as brutal and wild as he feels.

The car door slams against its side, and he is too old to get away with sitting in the backseat, too old for it to be anything but an excuse not to have to sit beside Ma. She would see through the act in an instant. Him, running scared. He keeps his eyes on the road.

“So. You’re not going to say anything?” She begins. “No excuses, nothing to make it all magically better?” Juno doesn’t speak. “I think you and I both know there is nothing that makes this all better.”

“He had it coming.” It’s all he has, and even as Juno offers his words up, he knows they are not enough.

She snorts. “‘He had it coming.’ Well, that’s all good and grand when you’re Police, or anything other than a twelve-year-old kid punching above his weight because he got cranky in the middle of class.” They swerve around the street corner and he almost flinches at the pull of inertia. “I didn’t raise you to be like this. Hell, I don’t know what I raised you to be but I certainly didn’t intend for it to be a violent little creep.” 

His shoulder knocks against the car door, hard on the plastic and he wonders what Benzaiten’s doing back at the school. If he’s still sitting in Math without Juno to turn his attention away from the windows or take notes for the both of them. 

“I don’t know why you’re like this,” She says harshly. “What’s wrong with you? You know what happens to children that grow up punching others, that grow up violent and angry?”

“No,” He replies dutifully.

“They go to jail, and if that happens I will disown you,” Ma growls and whips her head from the road to look at him with furious eyes. “Do you understand me, I will disown you and you will not be my son anymore.”

The buildings blur by and the window rattles inside its frame. “Yeah,” he agrees. “I get it.”

“Do you? Because it sounds to me like you don’t,” Ma hisses as they turn around the block to their apartment complex. “You are going to grow up to be a criminal, Juno, and then I will disown you and you will not be a part of this family anymore because I will cut you out of our lives.”

Juno bites his lip until he can taste blood and thinks of Benzaiten. He only has so much to give and his brother isn’t something he is willing to give up. “Okay,” he replies, but still doesn’t apologize. She hefts a frustrated sigh, jaw locked tight.

“I don’t enjoy having these talks,” She tells him like she thinks he  _ does _ . “I hate the way I always have to be the bad guy with you. Next time you think about pulling something like this, consider that, huh.” Ma instructs like the walls in their apartment are thicker than her screams through the phone, in the kitchen, in her office. Like he doesn’t go to sleep with his legs cold, blanket bundled against his ears along with his pillow.

They pull into the parking lot of their complex, barren for the most part and Ma gets out without sparing him a glance. 

His knuckles hurt.

* * *

Juno Steel is thirteen and his blood is singing. He is too, or screaming, but he can hardly tell the difference between the tenor of his voice and Sarah’s. 

“I give you food, I give you a roof over our head and you don’t even have the fucking decency to treat me with respect!” She yells and he can almost see the roof shaking.

He lets it slide off him and in this way he is invincible. Nothing she can say can hurt him because it’s nothing he doesn’t know already. It is nothing he hasn’t heard a thousand times over in his head.

“All you gave us was a childhood of shitty parenting and trauma waiting to happen!” Juno pushes, something rising thick in his throat. “You think you’re sorry when you look at me, well take a look in the fucking mirror because I found this family’s disappointment and it’s not your sons!” 

His heart is pounding out of his chest like in those old cartoons, fighting against his skin to burst from his ribcage. Juno is standing on the edge of a cliff, staring over its side because this is a precipice, he cuts his voice to shreds and waits for something to happen.

“Don’t you dare talk to me like that,” She snaps and reaches out a clawed hand like she wants to grab something and squeeze. His neck, maybe. “Forget locking the doors at night, I should’ve locked them behind you. Kept you out, because that’s what you want, isn’t it? Live on the streets because life is so easy, it’s so easy to make ends meet without the burden of your mother.”

There is adrenaline pumping in his veins and Juno isn’t sure if he is falling or flying yet, just that he is no longer standing on the edge of something, but either way, the wind rushes in his ears.

“Anything,” he promises, “to get away from you. I’m barely into my teens and I could do better than you! Fuck, not like it’s hard, bet I’d be able to hold down a job for longer than a month.” Sarah Steel looks at him like she hates him and Juno matches her step for step, twists himself until he is made out of rage. “Bet I would get us out of this shithole,” he gestures at the only home he has ever known and shame wells up in him. He shoves it back down.

Sarah tilts her head, widens her eyes sarcastically. “Oh, yes, if only you weren’t the one who ruined our lives in the first place, little monster. If only I had seen you for what you are and cut my losses. Maybe I should have realized you were only ever fit to be a disappointment.”

He burns, or maybe that’s just his heart, his eyes. Juno stomps to the doorway, still wearing his shoes from walking back in. “Maybe,” he swears, gripping its metal frame, “you should have spent the creds you used to make me on more booze. I’d bet you’d give a hell of a lot more shits about that than you do us.” 

Past Sarah, he sees the bedroom door creak open, eyes staring out that match his own. Juno slams the door anyway and stands outside for a second. There’s a click behind him, the lock slotting into place and he doesn’t pause any longer.

  
  
  


He goes back the next morning after a night in the sewers, shivering from two nights of sleep in a row down there because Mick’s parents have only ever tolerated him and Juno hasn’t looked Sasha in the eye for months. Their apartment is on the third floor and as much as he wishes he could climb in through his and Benzaiten’s window, he slinks in through the front instead.

There’s a bowl of cereal waiting for him beside Benten at the kitchen table, and it’s like finding his own tombstone, name engraved into the rock with care and time. 

“Where were you?” Ben whispers and Juno is about to tell him when footsteps have him stiffening in place. Sarah is facing the fridge when he works the nerve to look up.

She slides a glass of water to him across the table, not a single hint of anger in sight, unlike yesterday. “You’re always going to come crawling back,” says Sarah like she’s thinking aloud to herself, “aren’t you? To leave, you’d have to find someone else to take you, and well… good luck with that.” And it stings worse than any screamed remark they’d shouted at each other.

Juno takes the glass of water silently, glass scraping on the counter, just another noise. Promises and arguments that don’t mean anything in the end. She turns away, and he catches a grin, satisfied in the corner of her mouth because they both know she is right, and they both know who has won.

* * *

It starts with a bad day. That isn’t saying much, considering most of his days are ‘bad days,’ but then it morphs into a bad week. Get into a fight with Sarah, leave Benzaiten homebound after he breaks his leg, get into a fight with Sasha about his non-existent guilt complex.

“So, I had this idea, right? If your parents just combined their products they would bring in twice the customers!” Mick exclaims. “That’s twice the revenue!”

Sasha sips her drink and Juno swallows down the taste of chlorine and battery acid. “That’s a—”

“Shit idea,” Juno cuts her off. “Which would occur to you if you could count higher than your IQ.”

“Hey, Juno? Uncalled for. Honestly, the way you’re knocking this stuff back makes me more concerned for your IQ than Mick’s,” Sasha tells him. “Lay off a bit.” He squeaks his barstool a bit and pretends it’s her voice, annoying and pitchy.

Mick just laughs it off, “See if you’ve got any better ideas and then we’ll hear them.” Juno wonders if he notices the way it’s too tight at the end. Forced, like smiles and bags beneath eyes. He pictures his friend a couple of decades in the future and it is all too easy to imagine him with that same grin, skin stretched like saran wrap over his bones. Juno shudders and swallows the rest of his drink challengingly.

“Whatever. It’s not like I plan on going into dead-end businesses.”

“Nah,” Mick teases, “you’re just going to end up shaking down Oldtown for every cred it has to spare.” He sighs and lifts his own glass. “Just like our parents.” The chatter of the bar, the background murmur of kids and adults alike isn't quite enough to conceal his words, though Juno dearly wishes it was.

Sasha wrinkles her nose at that and Juno grips his drink a little harder. “Shut up, Mercury.”

“What? I mean, it’s not like I’m planning on going anywhere and you two haven’t been the most forthcoming with your plans, so why leave?” He shrugs, and that’s just like Mick Mercury, isn’t it? He plans to do absolutely jackshit with himself, stay here and rot with the cracked upholstery and stink of ozone in the streets. Well, not Juno. “At least here we’ve got each other.”

“Because that’s all I want out of my life,” Juno starts, and he is spinning in his seat, the world spinning around him.When does it fling him off its skin, splat into the stars, against the floor. “Sunshine, dust storms, and  _ Mick Mercury _ by my side.”

“Mick, you can’t think we’re all going to be here forever,” Sasha leans forward, demanding.

His tone rises, defensive the way Juno’s does when he’s mad, though he is always careful not to get too mad around them. He saves the screaming for home. “Okay, Sasha. You, I can see, sure, but when has Juno told us anything about his goals? I learned Benzaiten was your twin from the yearbook!”

“We’re identical,” he groans.

“And that’s just my point! You never tell us anything about yourself, it’s all stone-cold silence and witty remarks with you. If I hadn’t met your brother, I’d assume it’s a family trait— that’s how naturally stubborn and irritable you are!”

Something hits the floor, his feet maybe, and Juno is dropping, gravity pulling him down with the weight of the sky. He shakes and Mick looks up at him with scared eyes because Juno is holding him by the neck of his shirt and his hands are over his mouth which is stained red between his fingers. Juno’s arm is raised in the air, fisted and Mick is still looking at him like he’s something to be scared of. 

His heart pumps and he drops Mick to the wooden flooring. “What the hell, Juno,” Sasha gripes, hauling Mick to his feet. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing, don’t—” Juno starts, and his head whispers,  _ you violent little creep _ . “Nothing. He’s gotta learn when to keep his mouth shut.” All his demons have his mother’s voice, crooning and familiar. He curls his fingers back into fists and shoves them in his pockets so he doesn’t have to see his friend’s blood on his skin.

“Here, Mick,” Sasha hands him back his drink and the bartender stops watching them with suspicious half-glances. Mick takes a sip and the liquid sloshes back into the glass as he puts it down, tinted rust and bronze. Juno watches a crimson waterfall seep slowly down its side. “Maybe you should stop for today, go home.”

Juno takes a breath that rattles in his throat and his hands shake inside his sweater uncontrollably. He isn’t in control of himself, Mick hasn’t looked at him once since scraping himself off the floor, though tomorrow he’ll probably greet Juno with a smile he doesn’t deserve. Right now, he feels dangerous, the bad kind, because he’s not the one with a mouthful of blood but Juno’s mouth is thick with alcohol, fangs. He swallows.

“Yeah, I think I will.” He slips out the bar, pausing in the doorway with an apology on his lips. But apologies don’t make things better, and they don’t fix mistakes. Sasha and Mick don’t try to stop him, letting him stagger out into the street, and Juno has never felt more like Sarah Steel’s son.

* * *

“Why do you hate me?”

She says it casually, just as he’s slung his backpack over the coat hanger, bunched up with their jackets all hung together. Juno freezes. “What?”

“I said, why do you hate me?” Sarah repeats calmly. 

He stares, taken off-guard. What the hell is he supposed to say to that?  _ No, I don’t _ . He’s not sure he can lie well enough. The more truthful answer, which tightens his skin, makes his pulse accelerate at just the entertainment of the idea.  _ Why wouldn’t I _ ? He seethes.

Juno takes a few measured steps into the kitchen. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He wonders what she would do to him if he said he did. He imagines saying the words out loud and it is exciting but no more than it is terrifying.

“You don’t? Huh, and here I was thinking I’m your enemy,” She considers in that same, light tone. His stomach sinks, a rock in the water. “You treat me like I’m one.”

“Weird,” Juno mutters and treads to his room carefully like Sarah will startle if he moves too fast. Benzaiten comes through the front door, having lagged behind to talk to a couple of their classmates and it’s like seeing the sun break through the clouds when she looks at him. It’s impossible to miss, the way her shuttered expression opens, blooms when she goes from dealing with Juno to speaking with Benzaiten.

He doesn’t ask,  _ does she love me _ , anymore. Juno knows the answer, and he doesn’t need to hear it out loud for confirmation. 

* * *

He has to drive across the city from the precinct to get to the Oldtown Penitentiary. The car is stopped inside the building’s lot where he throws the gears into park, pushing open the door and breathing in the air to let it coat his lungs. Juno has to practically march himself to the front gate, boots thumping on the cement, inelegant.

He inhales, and it’s easy to distract himself by looking up at the prison, to get furious at Sarah Steel like he has every other time he needs a target that isn’t himself. His process is streamlined this time. Juno has spent the last six hours working a dark stain out of the apartment’s carpet because he’s putting it up for sale and no one is willing to buy a place with blood like ghosts still ingrained in the fibers. He spent those hours scrubbing blankly in between every moment he had enough in him to sob.

It looms, a serrated thing of metal and rust above him. Juno’s pretty sure the place used to be an ammunition factory before the war ended, here at the rim of Oldtown, where he can make out the edge of the dome rising from the desert beside the decrepit outline of buildings.

There’s a gated entrance, and he flashes his ID to be let in. Juno pauses again at the doorway, faltering.

What’s he even going to say to her? Juno imagines screaming, yelling,  _ why did you do it _ ?  _ Why couldn’t you have waited two minutes for me to get there _ ? 

The first time she decides to make someone other than Juno her target and he would give anything for it to not have happened at all. 

Juno imagines asking her about what to do with all her crap, telling her he hates her,  _ is that what you wanted _ ?  _ Because, yeah, I do _ .  _ More than anyone _ . He can hear her voice in his head, spitting back, acerbic, growling out damnation even though the last time he saw her, she was dull-eyed and wane. She hadn’t even looked at him as she was escorted from their apartment.

His foot takes a step, moving him closer to the front doors, and his stomach twists. Then, Juno is ashamed because, for god’s sake, he’s still scared of her, and doesn’t he at least owe Benzaiten this? He should be able to face her, for him at least. He takes another step and feels nauseous.

It should have been him, Juno thinks. Not just because he deserves it far more than Benzaiten ever did, but because there are two labels that have always fallen neatly between his shoulders, one he treasured more than anything else, and the other he regrets every day. He’d always given himself the title ‘good brother,’ but if he was a good brother, Juno would’ve been there to take that bullet. He would be dead right now. Better dead, than what he’s left with. Better dead and a good brother, than alive and her son.

Sarah isn’t the one he wants to talk to anyway, but the person Juno wants to talk to, to ask, is far beyond his reach. His brother will never be able to answer his questions. He thinks them anyway.  _ Why did you stay, please, why did you stay _ ?  _ Why couldn’t you have come with me _ ?  _ What couldn’t you have saved yourself _ ?

Someone brushes past his shoulder to push open the door of the building and Juno turns around on his heels to race back to his car. He gets through the gate, sits down hard in the car seat, and knocks his forehead against the steering wheel, gasping for air. His eyelids flutter and shut, flutter and shut. Juno catches his breath eventually and then when he is able to go, he never sees Sarah Steel again.

* * *

Juno stops being the bad son the moment Benzaiten dies. He begs the question, in unwilling defiance with each of his breaths. Bad, in comparison to what? In comparison to nothing, because suddenly, the dark taint of his stain has no bright background against which it pierces. Juno isn’t the bad son anymore because he can’t be. There is no bright light to draw shadows, to contrast his innate monstrousness.

And he would give anything for it to not be that way. 

It doesn’t make him better either, not having Benzaiten to hold himself up to. Because Juno Steel stops being the bad son. Juno Steel never stops being the unwanted one.

* * *

There is a child in Oldtown. He doesn’t know how to properly tie the laces on his shoes and sometimes he scribbles outside the lines of his own drawing because his fine motor control isn’t good enough yet for him to be able to completely colour within them. There is a lot, he will find, he isn’t good enough for.

“Ma! See, it’s Turbo!” Juno holds up his drawing for her to see and grins when she smiles at it, unburdened by the image. 

“I drew us!” Benzaiten holds up a picture of his own with one big, squiggly stick figure in the middle and two smaller, misshapen ones at its side. The sun smiles down on them.

Sarah gathers them in her arms and they giggle there, pulled from the park bench. “Oh, look at my little monsters, so talented, the both of you.” There is no better day for getting out together as a family, and she’s been spending so much time in her office lately it makes for a nice change.

“Love you, Ma,” Benten tells her and Juno echoes the sentiment at his side. Something in her face softens at that, crow’s feet wrinkling.

“I love you too.” 

Later, Juno will wonder,  _ do you love me _ , and maybe that sort of thing shouldn’t be laden with doubt when he does, but that will become the way it works for Juno Steel. Then, it will become the way it has  _ always _ worked for Juno Steel just as soon as he stops asking the follow-up.  _ How can I make you love me _ ?

Because if love is a choice, eventually, it is one Sarah Steel stops choosing. Or maybe, love just stops being enough for her, for the good son, for Juno, who doesn’t hesitate in its giving. He beams, unsullied by doubt or fear, and his face is shared by no one but his brother.

It’s enough for now, his faith that love is unconditional, and on a bright day like this, there is no reason for him to believe anything else.

**Author's Note:**

> Go get some water. Re-hydrate, recharge. Go do that.
> 
> I was trying something different with this one, and it ended up pretty fragmented. huh.
> 
> Come find me @themagicmistress on Tumblr.


End file.
